Purpose
by The Legendary Zero
Summary: The young boy didn't know what his purpose was. He wasn't like the others. However, time had a nasty habit of revealing all, even the darkest of secrets.


**Author's Note: Quick thing I wrote up. I'm not completely happy with it, but go ahead and read it anyway (you clicked the link to get here, didn't you?). It was originally wrote up for a roleplay, which explains the ending. **

The heavens were a place of majesty, filled with white grand palaces, fountains, and statues set over a brilliant white landscape. The sun cast a light of eternal day over this dwelling of the Gods ever since it had been formed, a day so long ago that Majora couldn't even remember.

The child God, Majora was a small boy with only a white shirt and pants coupled with a crop of red hair on his head. Majora was the only one who looked like this, a simple child, and he was certainly the only one who acted like it. He was a simple boy, how could he help how he acted in front of his older and wiser siblings? He was not like the others. He hadn't been when they created the world, and he wasn't now.

One day, he finally gathered the nerve to approach Brother Dios about the matter. The God of Time and Light, he was the wisest of them all and certainly the most tolerant of Majora's actions.

"Brother Dios, what is my purpose?"

Dios looked up from a thick volume he was writing in," Hmm? What's that?"

"Well…Sister Din carved the Earth and created fire, Sister Nayru created Law and water, Sister Farore created life and the wind, Brother Oni created chaos and shadow, you created time and light, but what did I do? I must have done something…but I cannot remember…"

Dios looked at the book and then at Majora, then set it aside after a moment's hesitation. Record keeping could wait.

"Well," Dios started," truth be told, you were an infant then and were unable to do anything."

Majora's eyes widened," But how is that possible? I was sent here like you were, right?"

"Yes, you were, and the mystery has even eluded me. But fear not, for time always reveals the answers."

Majora adopted a sour expression, as if he was hoping Dios would not use that particular line as he always did.

"But…if I don't do what I'm supposed to, then I didn't do my job like all of you did yours…"

Dios sighed," Very well, then. Tell me, what do you like to do?"

"What?"

"If you tell me what comes into your mind as you go about the day or whatever things you do, then I might be able to give you an answer," Dios elaborated.

Majora tilted his head," Ohhh…well…I don't know."

Dios raised a brow," Really? Then what do you make your frequent visits to the Earth for?"

Majora paled. "You know? Oh…I broke one of Sister Nayru's laws…please don't tell her, brother!"

"Calm yourself, Majora, I haven't told her. I haven't sensed you do anything to damage Time or even the Earth itself, so I see no need in informing her. But tell me, what do you do there? Perhaps you've been doing your task without knowing it, if the Earth compelled you to visit it so."

The child God became visibly uncomfortable," N-nothing at all brother…"

"Oh?" pressed Dios again, hiding his inner amusement with a stern look. How wondrous to be able to deal with a child, so innocent and pure, rather than Brother Oni for once.

"I swear, I just went down to the Earth to see children, I haven't known any ever since I was able to speak…and they saw me too. Honest, I didn't plan for them to see me!"

Dios kept his stern expression," And how did you conceal yourself?"

"…I hid behind a tree and one of the children attacked me."

"Attacked?" repeated Dios, surprised.

Majora seemed uncertain if that was the right word for it," Well, when the girl got off of me, she apologized because she thought I was playing the 'Hide-and-Go-Seek'. I told her I didn't know what it was and she invited me to play."

"And did you?"

Majora's eyes shifted uneasily once more," Yes…and it was fun so I kept going back to play with them. It was strange, though, there were no adults there…"

Dios started putting two and two together," Ah, you must have stumbled upon the Kokiri Forest. Farore was adamant about having a race of children who would forever be innocent and stay without fear of corruption. They must have taken a liking to you."

"It's not bad, right? I can go back, can't I?" the young God's eyes were pleading.

Dios finally allowed himself a chuckle," I think I've finally figured out what you are – a God of Innocence or perhaps even children."

"Truly, am I?" asked Majora, pleasantly surprised.

"To be truthful, I'm not quite sure yet. Time will tell, time will tell."

Majora ignored the last bit, impatient as a child could be, overjoyed at his new discovery. But then he remembered something.

"Umm, Brother Dios…sometimes when I go to play, they don't like me."

Dios had just picked up his book again before he glanced at Majora," What do you mean, 'don't like'?"

"Well, like when we play tag, I tag them and they fall to the ground and get mad at me because I laugh about it. Or, or, sometimes I take some things from their houses and they get mean when they see me with it. I don't know why, but they make me apologize for it whenever I do it even though I don't know what I did bad. Oh, and there was this other time I took one of the kids into the woods and left him there for fun. I was watching him so he didn't get lost, but he still got mad when he got out a few days later. I thought he'd laugh with me when he got out…"

Dios didn't know. He couldn't have known what this would mean one day. Good-naturedly, as if Majora's pleasure at others misfortune was a simple part of being a child, he said:

"Then, perhaps, you are a God of Mischief?"

One day, years after Brother Oni had instigated a war among men in the land of Hyrule to spread chaos, Majora found himself growing older. His body was getting higher and his face more mature, but his attitude seemed to grow more childish even so. The others noticed, of course, but said nothing.

What he did remember vividly was Brother Oni eyeing him, a curious expression of pity and, perhaps, remorse.

Hyrule had grown older, and so had the lands around it. The three sisters watched over the Earth together, having unofficially become the ones who would maintain the Earth while Majora and Oni did what they pleased and at their own leisure. Majora would make frequent visits to the land of Hyrule, playing with animals and humans however he wanted. Sometimes he'd chase the animals with the penalty of them being caught a brutal stomping, or sometimes he would play pranks with the humans. One particular thing the teen Majora had delighted in doing was stealing the ring of a boy about to propose to his beloved, leaving him standing there foolishly holding an empty box to the girl. He didn't realize he was growing more and more twisted, he simply wrote it off as being the God of Mischief.

Oni, meanwhile, had taken an interest in Majora and given him frequent company whenever he was back in the heavens. Though Oni seemed to be actually disgusted with Majora, he sometimes indulged his younger brother in a few particular games of Majora's design, one being a game where the other would try to cause bodily harm to the other until one surrendered. Naturally, Oni would win most of these, but sometimes Majora demonstrated his newly growing powers and pulled off a handful of wins. Other than that, Oni sat back and let humanity continue to spread chaos. He had to do very little since man itself had taken his job from him. From the penniless thieves to the rich and greedy kings who started wars, chaos was a natural part of any human's day, whether they caused it or witnessed it.

Most notably of all changes, however, was the absence of Dios. One day, he had left behind a small piece of parchment with a farewell to his siblings. The only explanation, the Goddesses deduced, was that Dios had taken it upon himself to watch the fabric of time up close and ensure that nothing would disrupt its flow and destroy the world. Oni had ventured, however, that he'd become time itself, though he'd never elaborate on that.

And, as the years became decades, Majora grew into an adult and Oni became more and more withdrawn from the rest, only taking a little bit of his time to ensure Majora was not lonely (for some reason).

Then, one day, rain clouds formed in heaven and a huge explosion shook the white paradise. The structures crumbled and the sky became a menacing typhoon, and its center was Oni himself. On the opposing side of him, Majora remembered, the three Goddesses stood ready, mustering their own powers for the battle ahead.

Majora looked from Brother Oni to his Sisters, then turned around and went down to the Earth as in a dreamlike state. Why was Oni challenging his sisters? What would come from all of this? Would everything ever be the same again?

Finally, as the lightning and thunder sounding from the heavens subsided days later, Majora returned to find three victors and no one else. They had their backs to Majora, who had without even realizing it become an adult as the battle of the heavens raged on. They were all looking down at something on the ground and murmuring amongst themselves. The Sisters looked battered and bruised, especially with their clothing ripped off in various places, even revealing parts of their bodies preferred hidden.

"Is this alright?" asked Din, still looking down but obviously addressing her sisters.

"What choice did we have…besides, he's dead and gone, this is merely an imprint of his spirit," answered Nayru, bending down to pick up something.

Majora looked up and noticed the sky had cleared, and with mounting dread finally accepted the obvious – Brother Oni had been killed this day.

The Goddesses turned around and met Majora, at first wondering who he was. However, with a better look at him, they seemed to realize it was the former child God and decided to explain what had happened.

Brother Oni had been growing more and more detached, that was the only warning any of them had had. Apparently, Oni had been thinking long and hard about something, and finally decided to follow through with it. During the battle, he'd said various things that revealed this decision.

"Do you not see? Life itself is chaos, creation is naught but a constantly changing harmony mixed with strife. Even without me, those given life spread their hate and chaos for as long as they live, with minor lapses of so-called 'peace' in between. There is no balance, really, and this is what I strive for. This pointless world, this pointless creation of life…there is no balance of good and evil because they will forever battle, chiefly battles between a man more good than evil and a man more evil than good. I will bring this balance, good and evil, light and dark, order and chaos, and in the depths of my very soul I know that this is what I must do."

...To that end, it seemed Oni had wanted to end all creation. Why? The Goddesses did not know the reasoning, neither did Majora.

However, once Oni had fallen, the Goddesses had destroyed him with little hesitation. With the last of his cosmic energies floating in the air, Nayru and Farore took that and made a mask in the fallen God's visage. The mask held no soul, but contained a fraction of the God of Chaos's power. They wanted to preserve it, not so much as for sentimentality, but since they were unsure if mankind would bring chaos to an end on its own. The mask would aid them should the need arise.

Soon after this explanation, the Goddesses healed their own wounds and reshaped the heavens into paradise once more, except now with two less people than it had begun.

In time, Majora finally understood what he was. Time truly had revealed everything. To name a few of these, it revealed that he was no God of Innocence, that Oni had known all along what was happening to him as he grew, and that what he took to be mischief could be defined as nothing more than evil.

The chaos of the world, the wars and pain and hate and rage and greed and every last bit of negative emotion that demonstrated acts of evil, this was what had aged Majora. When the world had begun, he was naught but an infant. When the world grew more and more corrupted, he physically and mentally grew. At first, his physical appearance seemed to be that of a normal human's life cycle as his form changed. However, time passed and he steadily became a monstrous and grotesque figure, one which radiated evil in its purest form. Mentally, he became more and more twisted and sadistic as mankind slowly fed him.

He had become the God of Evil.

More time passed. In that time, Majora grew in power and began to lose sanity. His Sisters looked upon him as the monster he was, waiting for him to do as Oni had done.

He did not disappoint.

A battle rocked the heavens once more, and again the three Goddesses stood victorious. As powerful as Majora had become, he was still no match for their combined powers, just as Oni hadn't been.

This time, however, they were unsure of what to do with Majora's conquered body. He was incapacitated, but not dead. If they destroyed him like Oni, what then if they needed him later on? Surely the God of Evil stood more than simply a testament to how badly this world had eventually become.

Eventually, they did make him into a mask. But unlike Oni's, this one would house his soul and a fraction of his power. If they needed him, they would simply find and somehow consult him. Leaving him alive was better than killing him and then finding they had made a grave mistake.

So, they combined their power and created a world to mirror Hyrule. In this land, they placed both the masks inside and then sealed the way to Hyrule.

But the Goddesses did not expect for the spirit of chaos and evil to be able to weaken the seal over time. Eventually, a pathway opened between worlds. Fairies discovered it, as well as a few odd travelers who never made the connection they'd just passed between worlds. They did not recognize many seemingly familiar faces because they didn't even know they were supposed to mirror people from Hyrule, people whom they never even met. Very few figured it out…

Like one Happy Mask Salesman who was drawn to and eventually discovered Majora's Mask (which held Oni's Mask inside the depths of its own spirit). Majora rejoiced at being found by a man not of the land 'Termina' and thought he would be able to manipulate him into eventually delivering revenge unto the realm of his Sisters. It seemed as if it was a certainty he'd be able to control the man, actually, being that he was a mask salesman and doubtless was excited by such a find. Majora even guessed that the man had found him using another of his various masks, which he knew held power because they simply radiated it.

The man was no such fool. He had no wish to meddle with the evil powers of the mask and stuffed it away in his pack. He hung around Termina for a time and then returned to Hyrule.

Majora feared he would be apprehended by his Sisters, but they did no such thing. Perhaps they didn't even know he'd crossed worlds. One day, he felt the mask salesman suddenly cease walking and drop to the ground. The pack opened and an ugly little Skull Kid stared down at him in wonder.

Now, this, he could manipulate.

Though he had a vessel, the Skull Kid proved unwilling to do as Majora wished except to pull extreme pranks that bordered on the edge of evil. The only reason he'd come back to Termina with the Skull Kid in tow was so he could destroy the alternate realm quickly while regaining some of his power off of the negative energy the world emitted as it was about to be destroyed by an angry moon.

As he abandoned the Skull Kid after finally feeling as if he could act on his own, Majora left departed for the moon in order to continue the destruction of Termina while simultaneously dealing with the annoying grasshopper who summoned the giants.

Seemingly lifeless, Majora's Mask fell back to the Earth as the moon returned to its original place of residence. The giants departed, and Termina rejoiced. Alternate dimension or not, its people were very real and very frightened.

And to top it off, he'd lost Oni's mask after foolishly deciding to make a game out of it with the child who looked strangely like a Kokiri. He'd thought to give Oni over to the boy and laugh when the power either overwhelmed his body or allowed him a bit of energy for a futile effort against the power Majora currently held.

Even _worse_ than that, he was back in the hands of the Happy Mask Salesman. Fortunately, the salesman assumed the power of the mask had subsided along with its obvious evil presence for a time and took it back to Hyrule.

Majora resolved to wait. The Goddesses did nothing about him, and it seemed unlikely they knew and were simply mocking him by filling him with hope of revenge.

Perhaps they never considered he would grow in power again after being confined to a mask in the mirror world of Termina. Perhaps they were observing him and even now deciding if they should be rid of him or allow him to live until such time they were sure he was no longer needed as a backup. Perhaps they needed him to exist because the balance of good and evil would be tipped dangerously with his loss.

Time would reveal everything, as Dios had once said, and eventually time would reveal whether his prolonged existence meant anything.


End file.
